Seems like the controversy caused by my review isn't such a bad thing after all, then.

This post has convinced me that Loerwyn and Lawrence are one and the same person (note the similarities in the names)! Just kidding.

Seriously, I'm about half-way through and must say that the book is very good... character-driven would describe the writing style quite nicely. Like Contrarius, I'm waiting to see how insane Jorg stays!

Me: Yup. He's not a nice guy. So? Do you think everyone in A Clockwork Orange went to Sunday school every week?

Loerwyn: Oh, he's also a prince who lives under a sort of self-exile after the murder of his mother and younger brother.

Me: Yup. So?

Loerwyn: Jorg is able to cut down experienced soldiers, fight in armour, survive being stabbed in the chest and all these other magical things.

Me: In case you missed it, this is a work of FANTASY. He survives being stabbed because he has taken in some of a necromancer's powers. He is able to cut down experienced soldiers and fight in armor in part because he was raised as a king's son, and in part because he has been controlled by a wizard. Fantasy, remember??

Loerwyn: The supporting characters are little different. We have a black man often called the Nuban, and we're frequently reminded that the black man is indeed black and that he has black skin and that Nubans are black. Because he's black, you see.

Me: Well, uh, yeah. So? This is writing that depends heavily on imagery of one sort or another, and Jorg depends heavily on the Nuban as one of the anchors tying him to whatever decency he has left. Thus, it is natural for Jorg to dwell on the Nuban's various physical and internal qualities. And remember, the Nuban isn't the only character or character-type whose color is repeatedly remarked upon. For instance, remember why it's called the Castle Red ?

Loerwyn: Jorg's Brothers (i.e. his band of merry men) are either food-obsessed, rape-obsessed, violence-obsessed or they're the fallen captain who joins in but still has a sense of honour.

Me: Why magically? It's a storage vault built deep into a mountain, specifically intended to survive just about anything. It does. That doesn't require magic, just very sophisticated technology and some luck.

Loerwyn: Now, the plot. I honestly do not know why most things happened.

Me: It appears to me that you'd have better understanding if you had paid more attention to the book.

Loerwyn: Jorg is trying to kill his uncle, which clearly involves razing villages, raping women, killing his own men and killing others.

Me: No, actually, he is NOT trying to kill his uncle for most of the book. This is the kind of comment that makes me think you weren't paying much attention when you were reading. During most of the book, Jorg is actually being manipulated by a wizard who specifically wants Jorg to NOT kill the uncle. The wizard wants Jorg to do exactly what he IS doing -- causing upheaval around the area, and gaining experience in murder and mayhem.

Loerwyn: He then decides to go home to his dad (The King!) for some reason, but not before killing one of his brothers for the fun of it

Loerwyn: and some old priest bloke who recovers from near-death rather quickly.

Me: Whoever said the priest was near death? He was left to die in a cage, sure -- but that's not at all the same thing as "near death".

Loerwyn: Daddy tells him to bring him a county, Jorgy-poo runs off to do it

Me: Why in the world would you ever think that idiotic words like "Daddy" and "Jorgy-poo" are appropriate here, in place of "King" and "Prince Jorg"?

Jorg is not entirely rational, not by a long shot. That's an important part of the story, not an excuse for you to ridicule the author.

Loerwyn: and so on and so forth. We go through tunnels with necromancers, a tourney outside a castle and a few other things here and there.

Me: Once again -- refer back to "fantasy". Oddly enough, these sorts of things happen in fantasy stories.

Loerwyn: The chapters of the plot are peppered by retrospective chapters that, without fail, take place four years ago, back when Jorg was about ten or eleven (I'll comment on that later). They almost invariably involve Jorg and the black Nuban of blackness, and how Jorg comes to respect him (I'll mention that later, too) and how we ended up where we are with this story. I thought they added some good information, but I feel like they could perhaps have been put at the start to give a chronologically smoother read.

Me: You've got something against flashbacks? It's important to the tension and confusion of the story that we NOT find out about the wizard Corion until near the end of the book. Thus, in part, the flashbacks.

Loerwyn: I honestly struggle to remember why Jorg went through the necromancer tunnels, up an elevator shaft (I think... Or was it a buried skyscraper?), why he killed the ladymancer, why he found the bombs, why he blew the mountain up, how he managed to escape in time and so forth.

Me: I'm not surprised that you have trouble remembering. I honestly think you just weren't paying much attention as you read. Don't blame your confusion on the author.

Loerwyn: I don't think many of these events were helped by Lawrence's often unclear writing, which caused me to reread things more often than I'd have liked.

Me: "Unclear"?? Do you want to read adult literature, or do you want to read the Cat in the Hat? IMHO Lawrence's writing is often almost hallucinatory in quality, but I wouldn't ever call it murky.

Loerwyn: How did this vault continue to function potentially thousands of years after the "apocalypse", and why did society revert itself to a society where women are only good for food and sex?

Me: See, this is the sort of thing that makes me believe you weren't paying attention. In fact, the specific number of years is set down explicitly right in the book. They find the computer precisely 1111 years after it was left alone in the vault.

As for reversion -- that's what can happen after any kind of apocalypse. Just take a look at Lord of the Flies, if you don't believe me.

Loerwyn: Surely if humanity survived, which it clearly did, then many things like social attitudes would survive to some degree?

Me: Hey, if that's the kind of society that YOU wish to imagine, then go write your own book based on that notion. Many other authors have disagreed with you, but if you like it that way more power to you.

Loerwyn: Christianity survived in this world, and somehow so did written texts, but some characters speak Latin. *How* did they learn Latin in the first place? How did magic come to exist? How could they almost word-for-word reconstruct a medieval setting? Too many questions were left unanswered for me.

Me: Hey -- this book is less than 400 pages long. Do you really expect Lawrence to cram in the entire detailed history of the world??

Loerwyn: There were also inconsistencies with Jorg's age. He's almost fifteen at the start, and reaches that age soon enough. That would mean the Four Years Ago bits span from ages ten to eleven, which is fair enough, except for the fact that Jorg is almost exactly the same four years ago. The way he speaks, the way he acts? He's an arrogant arse even at ten. However, when one of Jorg's best friends said "A little over three years ago, you were ten", it's clearly wrong. Jorg would have been eleven going on twelve. That's a big error there, Mr Protector of Jorgy.

Me: The guy's a soldier, not a scribe. Heck, I can't even remember exactly how many years ago I moved to this new place -- and that's only three or four years as well. You are setting your expectations waaaay too high here.

Loerwyn: The way women were treated made last year's Farlander look like the pinnacle of female equality, and that even mentioned breasts every two pages!

Me: Jeez Louise. This isn't I'm Okay You're Okay. This isn't Betty Friedan or Dr. Phil. This is a brutal story about a brutal world. (And before you start calling me a sexist pig, I'm a woman myself.) The author isn't saying it's "okay" to treat women badly -- he's just acknowledging that, in societies like this one, they DO get treated badly.

Loerwyn: Whilst Jorg was oddly compelling, he was as believable as Nicolas Cage's attempts to act.

Me: I actually found this one comment pretty funny. Nicolas Cage is a widely respected actor -- but NOT for any sense of realism. He isn't a realist. He creates drama and larger-than-life personae. And, in a way, that's what Jorg does as well. This is FANTASY -- and realism is not always the best friend of a fantasy tale.

Loerwyn: I find it impossible to believe that an arrogant, puffed-up fourteen year old would be able to lead a band of men twice his age, twice his strength etc, and so forth. It made no sense to me.

Me: Refer back to wizard, training as heir to a throne, insanity, and so on. I actually agree with you that it would be nice if he had at least one or two more years on him, but I don't think the lack of those one or two years ruins anything. Fantasy, remember?

I have to agree with a lot of Contrarius's points there, though not the confrontational tone. While Loerwyn's certainly entitled to her opinion, I feel a great many of her criticisms could be levelled at almost every fantasy I've ever read; and that I could make events from some of the most beloved fantasy novels sound faintly ludicrous by employing a number of her reviews tactics. And I to am surprised anyone could have missed the clearly spelled out wizardly chess players plot, its not oblique in the slightest.

I will also point out that I was six foot three at 14, indeed I still am, and a great deal larger than the typical adult, as were most of the rest of my rugby team. It hardly seems surprising in a brutal world that bloodlines inclined to produce large powerful men might rise to rule.

Spoiler:

As for Jorg's dominance over older and stronger men this is explained in large part by his miraculous killing of Price - the Brothers former leader and Rike's older tougher brother. If I saw someone kill the biggest badass I knew with three pebbles I would be pretty darn wary! He also has Makin and the Nuban as sort of built in body guards, and I think we can safely presume they are very influential amongst the Brothers. I did not find it troubling by the end.

I interpreted the Red keep as a nuclear storage facility being explained by someone who had no idea what it was. I believe there is at least one such facility actually built into a mountain as described - could swear I swa a documentary about it years ago.

Does anyone know if this novel will be release in an audio format? Having that as an option is worth the cost to me and really moves a book up my 'things to 'read'" list since I have been driving so much.
Thanks!

Does anyone know if this novel will be release in an audio format? Having that as an option is worth the cost to me and really moves a book up my 'things to 'read'" list since I have been driving so much.
Thanks!

I am eagerly awaiting an audio release myself. In the meantime, though, I can heartily recommend the First Law trilogy with Steven Pacey narrating. It's a GREAT pairing of book with narrator.

Thanks... I already listened to the First Law series as well as Best Served Cold and The Heroes. I spend more $ on Audio books than I do on print these days.
The reader makes or breaks them though. Roy Dotrice is who I want reading all my fantasy novels to me... but you are right Pacey was excellent.
Looking forward to it, but I never know what books will be released in audio... some are and some are not.

A couple of 'teammates' of mine, from elsewhere, rated this book rather highly. I was content to merely let it go at that. Now after all of this, the burr is beneath the saddle. I had nearly convinced myself that it was a book that I didn't "have to have."

Agreed. I can see Contrarius' points, and appreciate some of them, but the book still did nothing for me.

And that's fine. If the book did nothing for you, then by all means lay out the points that don't work. But IMHO the flippancy and ridiculing tone of your review were entirely uncalled for, and quite offensive. And as Ornery Wyvern noted, "a great many of (your) criticisms could be levelled at almost every fantasy I've ever read; and that I could make events from some of the most beloved fantasy novels sound faintly ludicrous by employing a number of (your) review's tactics. "

If you want to have a productive discussion of a book, then write a civil and thoughtful review of it -- either positive or negative. But if you just want to have some fun and do a hatchet job, IMHO this isn't the place for it.

You make it sound as if I constructed and planned a highly negative review. I didn't orchestrate it. I wrote it as things came into my head and that was it.

It wasn't a "proper" review, it wasn't done for SFFWorld, it wasn't done as a staff member of SFFWorld. It was my 'review' that consisted of my thoughts at the time. Was I a bit harsh? Maybe. Did I enjoy it? Perhaps a little more than stated in my review. Did the good overshadow the bad for me? No, not in the slightest. I had multiple problems with the book, and my 'lack of attention' (As you put it) was due to me not particularly enjoying the book nor caring for half of what happened. I thought it wasn't brilliantly written (I mean no offence to Mark there; I sometimes struggle with certain writing styles) and that affected my ability to comprehend and enjoy the book.

Ok? I struggled with it, I didn't enjoy it that much, and I wrote my honest thoughts down in no real review structure. It was an organic, flowing steam of cognition.

I didn't orchestrate it. I wrote it as things came into my head and that was it.

The first rule of netiquette:

"Rule 1: Remember the human

The golden rule your parents and your kindergarten teacher taught you was pretty simple: Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you. Imagine how you'd feel if you were in the other person's shoes. Stand up for yourself, but try not to hurt people's feelings. "